


when the evening sun goes down

by jonphaedrus



Category: The Inheritance Trilogy - N. K. Jemisin
Genre: Multi, Post-Kingdom of the Gods
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-16
Updated: 2016-12-16
Packaged: 2018-09-09 01:42:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,334
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8870854
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jonphaedrus/pseuds/jonphaedrus
Summary: When Itempas grieves, the sun and sky go dark.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mlraven](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mlraven/gifts).



> when i saw the prompt for them reuniting post-sieh's death at the end of kotg i knew right then and there i wanted to write something for it...but its also been a while since i read these books as well, so i struggled a bit more than planned, oh well.
> 
> it was hard to do this without lingering overlong on depression or grief, but yeine's transient nature made it easier to work on while still being a turn from the past to the future, so i hope it hits about on what you wanted!!

When Itempas grieves, the sun and sky go dark.

After Sieh dies, the sun and sky go dark for a long, long time.

But, the sun must come up eventually, as dawn is as inevitable as dusk, and to hang onto the one and not the other is fruitless.

 

 

Yeine, when she had been still-human, and soon after, had found the thought of Itempas grieving _anything_ baffling beyond words. He was light and sun and judgment and the raw force of self assurance that let the sun come up in the morning, and he did not Regret. At least, she had not thought that he Regretted. But Enefa's death, and the gentle hand with which Oree had guided him as a mortal, had opened the floodgates on all the many years of hurt he carried like a thorn deep in his heart of hearts.

As the years went by, more and more, she was realising how very wrong she had been. How very wrong they _all_ had been, and how near to annihilation it had brought them. The precipice had been there, and only Sieh’s hand had stayed them from the edge. Or, perhaps, knowing him, pushed them unceremoniously over it.

Centuries were as nothing to them, decades could vanish in the blink of an eye. It was how, her attention elsewhere and her mind roiled in her own grief for losing Sieh, Yeine did not notice until more than a lifetime for humans had skipped past. The sun was still dim, and it was going to kill humans sure as would have a Fourth. It was with a heavy heart that Yeine approached Nahadoth, who was still in their own form of mourning, the night sky darker than ever, to unite them once more. 

“Naha.” Her voice was the first and last breath. “We need to do something about Tempa.” Naha, all darkness and chaos, turned toward her rather like a flower opening, welcomed her into his embrace. She went, as always, totally willing to be held within and around him, her first love. 

“What can we do for him?” Nahadoth sounded as worried as he ever got, and there was something about his voice of the lost and scorned mother, robbed of her most beloved child. “We can hardly carry on as we are ourselves, Yeine.”

Gently, Yeine gathered Nahadoth back into corporeal body and not smoke and incense, build back his arms and legs, tangled together his hair out of the shade between stars, and at last cupped his face as changing as the face of the moon in her hands. He looked at her with his dark eyes, and did not look at her, and looked _through_ her and around her, all at once. “We need to do something about _all of us_ ,” she rephrased, gently, soothing his ragged brow. “Stagnancy suits you ill. In this, even Itempas cannot stay the same.”

“He needs time,” Naha reiterated, and Yeine shook her head.

“He has had more than enough.” He will have more. _They_ will have more. They will have all the life of this universe and more. This cannot be another Enefa; a millstone is not what any of them need bear. “Come with me, Nahadoth. Trust in me.”

“I cannot let him go so easy as you did your mother,” Nahadoth snarled, and Yeine’s temper crackled like a log popping in the fire. “Sieh was—“

“Sieh was light and life and goodness and hope for us all,” she snapped back, gripping Nahadoth’s chin unforgivingly in her fingers, “And he is gone now. And he will not be coming back. To pretend otherwise is to cheapen what he did for us. To grieve without end is to do the exact opposite of everything he was. He hated being trapped, Nahadoth. We cannot trap ourselves and call it a fitting memorial.” Nahadoth looked sour, but she was right. His acquiescence was acceptance.

 

 

Itempas was simultaneously much easier and much harder to rouse. The sun, after it had set, would not rise until the dawn without a great deal of effort. But he came, when Nahadoth called, and they welcomed him into both of their embraces. He was so warm—the exact opposite of Nahadoth, who could be as chilled as moonlight, and Yeine, who was both the heat of blood and the lukewarm rigidity of death.

He knew they were right, of course, but to stop grieving was a difficult thing. A lesson he had learned years before.

 

 

After a hundred years of wan daylight, the sun finally rose. Yeine, the Grey Lady, sat atop the ruins of Sky and linked her hands around her knees as she watched it break the horizon. Dawn was always the calmest time to her—the far horizon still dark with Nahadoth’s touch ghosting along the edge of the sky, and above it the false dawn that was the grey of her own sky. And, cycling in after them, the brilliant heat and fire of the sun, Itempas reaching for them both, the endless circle of their cycle.

A lifetime without the brightness of the sun. Over, now, at last.

As the sun broke the rest of the way over the horizon, she made a noise low in her throat and looked up behind her. Itempas was still as stone; his best impression of a statue, his sharp-carved face unreadable, his bright eyes staring at the sun. “This,” Itempas said at last, “Is not quite right.” Yeine did not push him, and let him sit on it before he continued, his sharp shoulders shifting as he gathered his thoughts together. “We cannot exist without Sieh,” he admitted at last. How well of him, to come so far in only a hundred years. It had taken him so many more to conclude the same of Enefa.

“You miss him.” Itempas did not deny her statement, and tucked his hair back behind one ear as the wind blew it—but it was just wind, and not the playful breath of their lost boy.

“Creation is lacking,” Tempa replied instead, crouching to sit down next to her, cupping the back of her head gently, fingers working into her thick curls. “Look at how still it all is. We Three are a little too predictable.” There’s a smile tucked at the side of his mouth, and Yeine wanted to roll her eyes. He, most of all.

“And here I thought we were done with Godlings.” She had none of her own; she didn't mind. Yeine was perfectly happy being a stepmother to many, but perhaps—

“We were. But if I can make a Demon, I think we can make a Godling.” Glee, who was still out there. Yeine knew Itempas went to his daughter less often of late, but she was one of the many things that had kept them intact in the last lifetime. “The world is wide and yawning without a Trickster in it.”

“Sieh would be so pleased to hear you say that.” Yeine laughed as she spoke it. “After all these years.”

“We must all do as our natures bid us.” Nahadoth’s voice; but no Nahadoth. Itempas’ grunt of agreement was quiet, but he did not deny. “I for one am tired of being stagnant.”

“Well,” Yeine stood up, dusting off her knees, holding her hand out so that Nahadoth could take it, coalescing in shadows and held breaths, sweep her into his arms and his not-arms, “Then we’d best get to work.” Itempas took her other hand, and she found herself as if in water, heat and chill on either side of her, a balance.

“I think,” Itempas murmured, as they joined together, flowed in and out, and back into nothing and everything, “Maybe a girl this time.”

“Why anything at all?” Nahadoth replied, father mother and nothing all at once in their voice. “The best tricksters are nothing at all.”

“Why don’t we let them decide,” Yeine settled on, and that was that.


End file.
